The physical size of computing devices is steadily decreasing as technological advancements reduce the amount of physical space required by integrated circuitry of computing devices. The proliferation of touchscreen technology into these computing devices provides further decreases in device size. For example, in touchscreen devices, the function of certain device hardware (e.g., keyboards, trackpads, and other input and selection tools) is integrated into the software capabilities associated with a touchscreen. Many mobile devices now forego the use of a physical keyboard and instead rely on touchscreen keyboards displayed on a display unit of the computing devices to allow for user input.
With the reduced size of computing devices, it is increasingly difficult to maintain the legibility of documents, such as webpages, portable document format (PDF) files, and spreadsheets on a display unit. Similarly, selectable objects (e.g., form fields, hyperlinks, and editable images) in documents are difficult to select using a touchscreen device, particularly when a document is cluttered with different types of objects in close proximity. For example, a user may desire to select a form field on a form document displayed on the touchscreen, but accidentally select a hyperlink located below the form field, causing the user device to navigate away from the form document to a file corresponding to the hyperlink.
Such inadvertent selections may be frustrating and detract from the intent of the touchscreen device to provide comparable ease-of-use as larger devices having corresponding hardware input tools. The issue is compounded by the fact that a selection of a form field will often cause the touchscreen keyboard to be displayed on the touchscreen, further limiting the available screen space for displaying the document. While some touchscreen devices offer zooming, panning, and other functionalities to aid in preventing inadvertent selections by a user (e.g., enlarging a desired object on the touchscreen to allow for an easier selection of the object), the additional action further detracts from the ease-of-use of the devices.